TikTok Shop Fee Calculator
What TikTok keeps from a sale and what actually lands in your account — plus the ROAS that net payout has to clear.
Varies by category — 6% standard, 5% on selected jewellery.
Zero if you are not running affiliate.
Net payout per order
$25.14
Platform keeps 16.2% of the sale.
- Referral fee
- − $1.80
- Creator commission
- − $3.00
- Withdrawal fee per order
- − $0.05
- Platform take rate
- 16.2%
After fees and cost of goods this SKU breaks even at 1.86x.
Tariffs change. Your floor changes with them.
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What comes out of a TikTok Shop sale
The list price is not your revenue. Four separate deductions sit between a customer paying and money reaching your bank:
Net payout = price − referral fee − creator commission − withdrawal fee − shipping subsidy
The referral fee is the platform’s cut of the sale. Creator commission is what you agreed to pay the affiliate who sold it, and it is optional only if you are not running affiliate at all. The withdrawal fee is small and per-transaction. Shipping subsidies are whatever you chose to absorb.
Stacked, these routinely take 20–25% of the sale before cost of goods is even considered. That is the number your margin has to survive.
Getting the referral rate right
The referral fee is the input that moves the answer most, so it is worth two minutes to get exact rather than approximate.
- Referral fee
- TikTok’s published US rate is 6% across most categories, with selected jewellery subcategories at 5%. That 6% is the default here. Rates are set per category and do change, so if your account shows something different, enter that — the shortcut buttons are there to make it fast, not to tell you which one is yours.
- Creator commission
- Set per product when you list on the affiliate marketplace. It is charged on the sale price, not on your margin, which is why a generous-looking 15% can consume most of a thin-margin product.
- Withdrawal fee per order
- Small and fixed, which means it is proportionally brutal on low-ticket items and negligible on high-ticket ones.
- Shipping subsidy
- Anything you cover toward delivery. Treated as a platform-side cost here because it comes out of the same sale.
A worked example
A $29.99 product at the standard 6% referral fee, with 10% creator commission, a $0.05 withdrawal fee, no shipping subsidy, and $9.00 of landed cost.
The platform takes $1.80 in referral fee and $3.00 in creator commission, plus $0.05 to withdraw — $4.85 in total, a 16.2% take rate. Net payout is $25.14.
After $9.00 of goods, contribution is $16.14, so this SKU breaks even at 1.86x — measured against the $29.99 the customer paid, not the $25.14 you received. Drop the creator commission and break-even improves to 1.57x, which is the honest price of affiliate distribution: the creator costs you more than the platform does.
What the take rate tells you
Take rate — total platform cost as a share of the sale — is the number to watch, because it is comparable across products and across marketplaces in a way that individual fees are not.
Below 10% usually means you are not running affiliate, and your distribution problem is unsolved rather than your fee problem being solved. Around 15–20% is typical for affiliate-driven selling. Above 25% and the platform plus creators are taking more than most importers make in gross margin, which only works on genuinely high-margin goods.
The pairing that kills people is a high take rate with an imported product. Duty compresses margin at the cost end while fees compress it at the revenue end, and the two are calculated independently — neither calculation knows about the other, but your bank account experiences both.
Questions
- What is TikTok Shop's referral fee in 2026?
- TikTok's published US rate is 6% for most categories, with selected jewellery subcategories at 5% following a reduction that took effect on 31 October 2024. Referral fees are set per category, so check your own category rather than assuming the standard rate applies to everything you sell.
- Is the referral fee charged on the product price or the total order?
- On the sale price of the goods. Shipping charged to the customer is handled separately, which is why a shipping subsidy you absorb appears as its own line here rather than being folded into the referral calculation.
- Do I get the referral fee back on a refund?
- Mostly. TikTok refunds the referral fee on eligible refunds but retains a refund administration fee — reported as 20% of the referral fee, capped at $5 per SKU. So a refund is not fee-neutral, and on imported goods it is considerably worse than that, because duty is never refunded.
- Should creator commission count as a fee or as marketing?
- Economically it is marketing — you are paying for distribution. But it behaves like a fee, because it is deducted from the sale before you see the money and scales with revenue rather than being a budget you control. Putting it here keeps your net payout honest; just remember it when comparing channel efficiency.
- Why is break-even measured against list price rather than net payout?
- Because ROAS is revenue over ad spend, and the revenue an ad platform records is what the customer paid. Measuring your floor against net payout would produce a number you could not compare to anything in your dashboard. The fees are handled as costs, which is where they belong.
Sources and last update
Last verified 2026-08-22.
- TikTok Shop Seller Center — referral fees by category
- TikTok Shop Seller Center — referral fee updates
- TikTok Shop Seller Center — introduction to seller fees
Figures here are planning estimates. Duty applies per 10-digit HTS code and platform fees change without much notice — check your own broker and your own seller account before committing spend. Full workings on the methodology page.